Visitors

We get some interesting visitors to our workshop.  One morning a man came, sat down, and watched us working in complete silence.  I finally made an overture to him and he mentioned that he had been a house carpenter.  I invited him to step into our shop for a closer look and he picked up my plane, looked carefully at it, and then marched over to our sharpening stones, took the blade out and began to sharpen it.  When he was done he sharpened another plane.  Then he grabbed my bag of tsubanomi (the chisels we use to pilot nail holes) and he sharpened all of them.  He’s been back a couple of times since and always watches us wordlessly.  I noticed last week he’s working as a parking attendant for the Festivale.

One of the Bengali instrument makers came over with a partially made guitar and asked Takumi if he would use his power tools to rough out the top where he will be carving a bird.  Several of the other Bengali craftspeople have asked about our power tools, as evidently many of them have no access to them in Bangladesh.  This man told us he works sometimes as an itinerant instrument maker, traveling among villages to make and repair instruments.  

Yesterday a very small, older man came by.  He made motions of sawing on the boat and I asked him if he was a boatbuilder.  He said he built large plank-on-frame wooden ships in a local shipyard and he showed us photos of the models he currently makes.  The construction of ferries must have been a huge business here since the Inland Sea is dotted with islands big and small.  He seemed charmed by our project.  Several other people have reminisced about their childhoods living on the islands, sculling small boats like the one we are building.

Bengali Shipwrights

We’ve been sharing techniques and tools with our neighbors at the Festivale, a pair of Bengali shipwrights who are assembling a 12-foot dinghy.  Its a remarkable boat.  They had it shipped here finished, then took it apart at the futtocks and have now begun to reassemble it.  

All the plank edges have a shiplap and they scarf the planks using a joint similar to the one we used to connect the stem and keel.  Today they showed us their method for pulling the planks tight before fastening.  A large jute rope is anchored to a piece of bamboo on one side of the boat then wrapped around the hull and pulled tight with a large hardwood lever.  They pulled the boat together with three of these and then fastened before moving forward.

The nailing is from both inside and outside the hull.  The nails are cut from sheet steel with one beveled end.  They cut a small mortise across the seam and pound the pointed end in, then bend the nail and hammer it into the other end of the mortise.  You will notice the seam is not centered on the nail, but the nails on the exterior are aligned opposite, so the fasteners are equalized.  The other reason the nails are not centered on the seam is that with a round hull they would stand proud in the center where the curvature was great.

Their interpreter has told me that this technology also applies to larger ships in Bangladesh.  He and the shipwrights are part of an NPO working to preserve the culture of boat and shipbuilding there.  

Yakimage

The term yakimage means “heat bending.”  The use of an open fire to bend planking is used throughout Asia, and its also familiar to the Bengali boatbuilders working near us.  The planks are bent slowly, off the boat.  In old photos and drawings often one can see stones used to weigh down the plank ends and though none of my teachers used weights, I tried it here.  It makes sense, because the weight applies a constant pressure.

First we beveled the plank edge where it meets the bottom, then cut our nail holes from the inside and made matching mortises on the outside.  

My teachers also all used props braced overhead to bend the planks.  I found it easier here to use pipe clamps pulling down against the metal framework of our shop.  The clamps let me apply steady pressure very slowly.

While the fire burned underneath the bending point we also poured hot water on the top of the plank.  We had to keep spraying water underneath to keep the plank from charring.  The whole process took us about six hours.  In the West, wood that comes out of the steambox has to be bent immediately.  The nice thing about this method is we can take our time.

Bending to the exact curvature was never something I saw my teachers attempt.  They bent by eye and then manipulated the plank on the boat to the final curve.  I made patterns of both the curve we wanted and the twist, and while I tried to match them to the bend I don’t think it was so precise.

Design of the Setouchi Tenmasen

A bit out of order, but a reader mentioned that I had not written much about the boat and its design.  The boat is a tenmasen, a typical small cargo boat from the Inland Sea region.  The lines drawings are from the Seto Nai Kai Museum and date from the 1950's or 60’s.  Boatbuilders always drew their boats on a plank of wood to a 1/10th scale.  The boat was built in Ushimado, a small waterfront community now part of Setouchi City.  Very typical Japanese small boat style, with the aft end of the plank keel uplifted, and two planks per side.  One interesting feature is the two piece transom which is not in one plane but joined at an angle.  In the drawing you can see the two stations used by the builder, another common element of boatbuilders here, who used far less reference points than their western counterparts.  The boat’s overall length is about twenty feet.  This boat would have been propelled off the stern by a ro, or Japanese sculling oar, similar to the Chinese yuloh.  

The image here is a design made by my apprentice, Takumi Suzuki.  He used the original lines drawing we got from the museum and added graphics and labels.  The design is for a tenugui, or a traditional hand towel.

And I will give another update on other blogs going on around this project.  One is being written by my apprentice and the other by my project partner Koji Matano.  You can also find video clips and links at the other blogs.

http://blog.douglasbrooksboatbuilding.com/ (English only)

http://woodenboat.jp/setouchi/ (English and Japanese 日本語）

http://hacarame.com (Japanese only 日本語）

Kawarazue

Last night we had a keel-laying ceremony for our boat, exactly one week after starting.  Mr. Orino, curator of the Seto Nai Kai Museum (one of Japan’s best maritime collections) had researched the traditions for this ceremony.  He bought a large sea bass and a bottle of sake, and we supplied a dish of rice.  Boat ceremonies come in all forms and he acknowledged that every boatbuilder would have some individual tradition.  

A Shinto priest could obviously officiate, and I have taken part in ceremonies involving priests, but the boatbuilder can also conduct the ceremony.  It was very simple: I was to remove my shoes and kneel on the keel and facing forward pray for the success of the project.  Then I was to pour sake on the keel plank at the middle, port and starboard in that order.  That’s it!  

I had invited the two Bengali shipwrights to join me and I said if they wanted to offer a prayer I would be honored.  They responded by doing a simple ceremony they sometimes conduct at a point in the boatbuilding.  The head shipwright dribbled water on the back of our stem, carefully rubbing the entire surface.  He then cut three horizontal lines in the back of our stem with his chisel.  Touching his forehead to the spot he stood up and touched each line with his finger and then brought his finger to his forehead.  The second shipwright did the same, touching his lips.  One is Muslim and the other Hindu but I don’t know if that explains the slight difference.  

I was told by their interpreter that all Bengali ceremonies focus on the bow, or the head of the boat.  The significance of three lines is that boats are invariably “even” meaning they are built in twos and fours (two of each plank, and so on).  Cutting three lines avoids the same numerical pattern as the construction, therefore concentrating the symbolism.  

Kirimage

We fastened the transom in a rabbet across the back of the keel plank.  At the bow we connected the stem to the keel with the kama tsugite, which is locked with a wedge.  The kama is a curved sickle, and the joint looks like two interlocking kama.  The basic backbone of the boat is now finished, and we will have a ceremony called a kawarazue on Monday at 7pm to celebrate this stage of the construction.

Like many Japanese boats, the tenmasen's keel plank rises aft, and the bottom is bent at a single joint.  This joint can also be kama tsugite, which is how my Tokyo teacher made it, or it can be made by a process called kirimage, or "cut bending."  I cut a dovetail groove across the bottom 1/3 the depth of the plank and a kerf across the top the same depth.  We then poured boiling water and slowly lifted the transom with a car jack.  As the top cut closes we recut it to relieve the opening.  Eventually when we are done we will insert a dovetail wedge across the bottom to lock the joint.  My teacher in Aomori used this technique.  

My Tokyo teacher was adamant that this method was a bad practice, and I could tell from the looks on the Bengali shipwright’s faces that they agreed.  I told their interpreter that it was okay if they wanted to disapprove and he said that, indeed, their first reaction was that this looked inherently weak.  They use a joint similar to the kama to scarf the rubrail and sheer planks on their boat.  This method is relatively quick, however, and the local maritime museum curator assured me it was the joinery Setouchi shipwrights used.  

Soon I've got to get a blog post up about their boatbuilding....

Tricks of the trade

All boatbuilders in Japan are familiar with this trick, which we used to align the stem and keel plank.  We stretched a string from the top of the stem on the centerline down to our centerline on the keel.  Then I hung the sashigane (square) from the string so the corner hung just above the line.  It makes an interesting plumb bob for lining these parts up.  

The sashigane is much lighter than a Western square and extremely flexible as well, two qualities that come in handy in many situations.  The scarf between the stem and keel is locked with a hardwood wedge.